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The Now Ex Electrician

This story began way back in the 70’s; maybe early 80’s—don’t remember. We bought our first central air conditioner and hired this man to install it. From then on he became our ‘go to’ man for the AC problems, the refrig problems, washer and dryer issues—anything with electricity going to he helped us with it.

We never had to call him extremely often-he always came within a reasonable amount of time; surprisingly because he was a 1 man show. He was honest, he was reasonable in charges, always respectful.

Through the years we developed a friendship—he, hubby and I. We would laugh and joke, share stories, and I even shared some of home canned goods with him.

When we had the greenhouse business, he came and bought plants; brought his girlfriend to buy flowers and always had a running banter going.

After the nursery business was closed, he would call and offer me peas, greens or other fresh food. Terry and I would go gather it; or if Terry couldn’t go with me I’d go alone. I could never gather much and always had to choose the time of day because of my health issues, but I always did my part. He knew about my health, he would help pick, but never picked for me.

One day last summer he called and said he has some fresh corn if I wanted to come pick it. I assured him I was very thankful for the offer, but at the moment I had too many things going on and simply didn’t have time to come pick corn. I had just brought Terry home from having and upper GI, had Farmer’s Market the next day , church the next—it just wasn’t going to work. But again I thanked him for the offer.

Click.

Without a word he hung up on me.

Later on that afternoon I received a text message saying: What if I might just not have time to come fix your stuff.

I replied: There are a lot more electricians in the ocean than you and I know a lot of them.

With that, not another word was said between us; although he did call Terry a few months back to see if he wanted to go fishing in the Mississippi River with him. Terry refused as he doesn’t like the fish from that river and he doesn’t like to go off with people who carry on and possibly drink a whole lot.

Well, then the lightening took out a lot of stuff here back several months ago—our neighbor came right up and tried to get us the AC back going—so we got him to do all the other work we had to do to prepare for a new roof—moving electric lines and fixing the AC and a few other things. The thermostat we replaced was burned-and I’m sure Terry mentioned that, as well as having to replace a lot of wires out at the heater to our now ex electrician.

Over the weekend the temps were going to drop into the 30’s. I changed the batteries in the heater thermostat on Thursday, but it wouldn’t show numbers, so Friday I bought a new one, and we installed it that night. Saturday morning we get up, turn the thermostat to heat and nothing. We check out several things, but still no heater firing up, so Terry calls our neighbor, who is out of town. He then calls our now ex electrician, leaves a message and gets a return call from him. He tells Terry he has to go into La first but he will be up here around lunch time.

He then asks Terry why didn’t we call him for the other electrical work we had to have to done to which Terry said; “You were mad at Klara, so I didn’t figure you would come”

Well, when I came up the highway on the way home from work Saturday his work truck was sitting in his yard—that was 12:10. We waited and waited and finally around 2 Terry called but got no answer. I called and left a message but no answer. I sent a text but no answer. That was Saturday; temps dropped to around 33 outside Saturday night, early Sunday morning-but still no work from the now ex-electrician.

However—We had just had a new metal roof and insulated windows put in the house. My house was built in ’76, it is old. It’s brick but it’s been through a lot.

With the new roof/with insulation between the metal roof and the existing roof and the new windows, the lowest the temperature got in my house was 64 degrees. Thank you Lord. I didn’t need that now ex-electrician to make sure I didn’t get cold. Hubby’s decision to do the roof and windows and the good Lord took care of us. I am so excited about that.

Terry went today and bought the part (we think is/was the problem) and replaced it. It’s not cold enough really to see for sure, and I told Terry to not worry about it until we needed to.

Terry called our neighbor about the part, but he didn’t have one, but told Terry where to get it. He also told Terry that if that didn’t work, let him know and he would come check it out. God is good!

We plan to talk with the neighbor about a young man he trained-we are thinking of getting him as our regular electrician when our neighbor can’t come. The young man has already been highly recommended by a friend of ours.

So, when someone tries to hurt—remember this—if you’re a child of God, you are behind His wall of protection!!!!!